A moment of silence for the WAC

How’d you like to be in Phoenix this week for the Western Athletic Conference’s annual athletics meeting, where half those present have already punched their ticket elsewhere, and the other half wish they were?

Doing its best to stave off yet another mortal blow, the WAC issued a brief statement this morning proclaiming its intent to remain viable as a “preeminent” Division I conference.

It’s a variation of the same theme the WAC has been pushing for the better part of two years now, ever since the first round of defections started the league on a death spiral that now appears irrevocable with the impending departure of five of its seven football members: UTSA and Louisiana Tech to Conference USA, Utah State and San Jose State to the Mountain West, and Texas State to the Sun Belt.

(UTSA will have their request to leave the WAC rubber stamped by the UT System Board of Regents on Wednesday, followed by an official announcement from C-USA on Friday morning.)

But despite the WAC’s reputation as the Jason Voorhees of college athletics, repeatedly surviving despite losing members like the infamous horror movie slasher loses limbs — 29 different schools have called the league home at some point — this would appear to be one blow it can’t recover from.

Recent events put UTSA and Texas State in the unique position of having lined up their next home without playing a single a down of football in the WAC. On the other end of the spectrum are Idaho and New Mexico State, who wouldn’t appear to have any other options but to swallow their pride and return to the Football Championship Subdivision.

It isn’t unlike the situation facing the WAC itself. Whereas the league once hoped to achieve the near-impossible task of adding more members to retain its membership in the Football Bowl Subdivision, its only chance of survival is to lure more members as an Olympic sports league.

Many would put the blame at the feet of former commissioner Karl Benson, who followed the trend by bolting earlier this year for the Sun Belt. But the seeds for the WAC’s demise were actually sowed just before he arrived, when the league expanded to 16 members in 1996.

The unwieldy conglomerate would eventually splinter with the creation of the Mountain West, leaving the WAC with a collection of leftovers stretching from Hawaii to Louisiana. Such geographic infeasibility meant it was only a matter of time until the whole thing broke apart, a process that started in earnest two years ago and now appears to be in its final stages.

It’s a shame, considering the history of the league stretches all the way back to the early 1960s. But as the last few years have taught us, time stands still for no league in this savage new era of college athletics, and it’s every school for itself.